MCLC: interview with director of Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kevin lee <kevin at dgeneratefilms.com>
Subject: interview with director of Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
****************************************************************

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, the award-winning documentary by Alison
Klayman, has been acquired for distribution by Sundance Selects and is
scheduled to screen in theaters this summer "to coincide with Mr. Ai's
first trip outside China since his detention":

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/ai-weiwei-documentary-planned-
for-summer-release/

The following is an interview with the director, Alison Klayman.

Kevin

================================================================

Source: 
http://dgeneratefilms.com/uncategorized/cinematalk-interview-with-alison-kl
ayman-director-of-ai-weiwei-never-sorry/

CinemaTalk: Interview with Alison Klayman, director of ³Ai Weiwei: Never
Sorry²

By Maya Eva Gunst Rudolph

Alison Klayman (alisonklayman.com)

Alison Klayman is a journalist who, while living in China from
2006-2010, produced radio and television for news sources such as
NPR¹s ³All Things Considered,² AP Television, Voice of America,
Current TV, and CBC. She is the director of the documentary filmAi
Weiwei: Never Sorry, which won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Prize
for Spirit of Defiance at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. I spoke
with Alison at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah about the
film¹s trajectory, the role of social media in making bringing this
story to life, and her working relationship with China¹s most
notorious artist and filmmaker. Thanks to Alison and her team for
their cooperation.

‹

dGenerate Films: Can you talk a little about the origins of your
working relationship with Ai Weiwei and how the project got started?

Alison Klayman: I had been living in Beijing for about two years when
my roommate, Stephanie Tung, who was working at Three Shadows
[Photography Center, a gallery and cultural center in Caochangdi,
Beijing] got me involved in an exhibition they were doing of Ai
Weiwei¹s photos from New York. The photos are kind of a³greatest hits²
series of contemporary cultural figures in China and provided an
interesting window into this cross-cultural understanding of New York
that I was really drawn to. I was kind of underemployed at the time
and Stephanie suggested I make a video to accompany the exhibition.
Rong Rong [photographer and Three Shadows director] gave me the okay
and I went from Three Shadows to Weiwei¹s house with the camera
already rolling. It was really natural and organic. I didn¹t just show
up at Weiwei¹s door and say ³I¹m fascinated by you, I want to film
you.² We finished the video and Weiwei liked. I think it showed who he
really is‹very charismatic and engaging, fun-loving, doesn¹t take
himself too seriously. And then projects just kept coming up, so I
feel compelled to keep filming. That¹s kind of the beauty of
Beijing‹it¹s very open and you can easily fall into these kinds of
projects unexpectedly.

dGF: The film opens with a very loaded quote about Ai Weiwei¹s cats
and the fact that, if one of his many cats hadn¹t learned to open the
front door, no one would know that cats were capable of opening doors.
This opening seems to speak both to Ai¹s status as a maverick and also
brings to mind Deng Xiaoping¹s famous declaration that ³it makes no
difference if a cat is black or white so long as it can catch mice.²
Can you discuss this opening?

AK: We tried out a million different openings. I was really uncertain
how I wanted to open the film‹we even had a different beginning at the
screening at Art Basel. I wanted to audience to meet Weiwei first as
an artist, one on one. Ultimately, I felt this opening gave the film
somewhere to go and gave momentum to many of the storylines,
especially the projects related to the Sichuan earthquake. It¹s also
telling because Weiwei¹s house is just filled with cats‹animals
everywhere.

On the level of allegory, I think this represents the idea that Weiwei
is part of a generation of like-minded people, but he¹s still a unique
case. It¹s this fact that makes the film engaging, the fact that he¹s
completely unique and kind of one-in-a-generation.

dGF: How did you conceive of your audience as you were editing, in
terms of their knowledge of China and of Ai Weiwei?

AK: I did post in New York with an editor who had no background in
China and no Mandarin language skills, so this gave me perspective on
what people know and don¹t know about China. I really had no idea
beforehand. I designed the film to add value for those who are
familiar with Weiwei and get to know him in a new way, but I made the
overall assumption that people didn¹t really know anything about him.

Now, after his detention, I have to question what people really do
know. Sure, people are more aware of Ai Weiwei, but I think this
creates more of an appetite for information than a preconception.
After the detention, I contemplated changing the film to open with
this story-line, but I now see the film as a chronicle of everything
leading up to the detention. We had no need to reverse engineer the
film.

dGF: In the film, [Chinese art scholar and curator] Karen Smith says
of Ai Weiwei¹s art ³because it¹s Chinese, it becomes political.² This
seems like a telling description of how even without a topic as
politically divisive as Ai Weiwei, any story about China can be
politically charged these days. How did this idea inform your
storytelling or approach to the film¹s inherent politics?

AK: This was an entry point to a lot of aspects of the film. I¹ve seen
Ai Weiwei interact with a lot of journalists and react to people¹s
expectations. I think these expectations are what Karen is alluding
to. I think people applied the term ³dissident² to describe him far
before it was applicable. On a certain level, it has to do with
anticipating expectations‹of existing on a public stage‹even though
he¹s on a public stage all of the time with twitter and press
coverage.

Also, there¹s an emphasis on what is real vs. fake in Weiwei¹s art, so
I was curious to know to what degree his politics are genuine. I
wanted to know if his political convictions are genuine or more
strategic. I¹m convinced now that he¹s genuine. He puts forth a set of
values rather than a plan for political reform and it¹s these values
that make him a popular figure.

from "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry"

dGF: Social media has played a huge role in the film¹s existence, from
Ai Weiwei¹s use of twitter to the kickstarter campaign to help finance
the documentary. How do you hope social media will be used in the
distribution and future of the film?

AK: Social media has been crucial so far. [Twitter founder] Jack
Dorsey is a supporter of Ai Weiwei and we¹ve had messages from twitter
employees saying that Weiwei is an inspiration for what they do. We¹ve
had meetings in New York and San Francisco, but it¹s all still really
new, so it¹s hard to say how we¹ll work to promote the message. It¹s a
message that¹s about much more than just promoting a film. In some
ways, the film is a contribution to the history of social media. There
aren¹t a lot of historical twitter films‹this may be the first. I
think it¹s a challenge for filmmakers regarding how to go forward with
telling social media stories and giving a physical presence to these
platforms that aren¹t physical.

It¹s also worth mentioning that I was really struck when I asked
Weiwei what, to him, was a watershed moment in his life and he said
³the internet.² At first I though, of course, the internet was a big
deal for everyone, but this was a truly profound development for him.
It wasn¹t just a sidenote.

dGF: Can you talk about your experience with Ai Weiwei¹s detention?
How did this impact you personally and how did it impact the film?

AK: I actually found out through social media, maybe an hour or so
after he disappeared, but before his studio was raided. I was in New
York and stayed up until maybe 5am, skyping with studio assistants.
They were tweeting from his account, acknowledging that it wasn¹t him
writing the tweets. It was really an all-sides attack on twitter, so I
stayed up following [the assistants¹] good flow of information.

By Monday morning, it was a big story and I had emerged as a go-to
person who was an expert on Ai Weiwei, was in New York, and had strong
personal feelings about what was happening. I think I probably had two
years worth of media training in a few weeks.  As far as the film is
concerned, I took a week long-break from the footage after he was
detained. When I came back to editing, I felt a sense of obligation to
just finish telling the story. It was tough‹a lot of the footage from
happy times felt really sad. For a while, it wasn¹t looking good. We
feared he was going to come up against Subervsion charges, but I
really couldn¹t stop working. I just wanted to get the film out into
the open, to create awareness, so we were just rushing forwards. The
day he was released was really the best day ever. It was just so
great. The things that¹s funny is that, after everything, Weiwei still
had the same cell phone number. There was a tweet about a text message
he had sent from that number. I later heard from [UCCA director,
featured in the film] Phil Tinari and he said he¹d just given Weiwei a
call and he answered. So I did the same.

dGF: Speaking generally, how do you‹as an American‹conceive of
yourself as the person telling this story? Additionally, you interview
a group of people‹both expats and Chinese‹who occupy a fairly specific
echelon of Chinese artistic culture. How does this influence the way
the story is told?

AK: First of all, I never saw this movie about someone who doesn¹t
have a voice. It¹s not a story that hasn¹t been told and I never set
out to speak for someone else. I wanted to present a good, honest,
behind-the-scenes portrait of someone who belongs to the world. I
spoke with some of Weiwei¹s friends who thought he was an American
citizen, but in fact, he¹s let his green card lapse. As far as the
community represented is concerned, I really just want to feature good
storytellers telling a good story. I wanted to stick to people with
real cred, who know Weiwei, who are close to the world he lives in. In
any case, it¹s clear that Ai Weiwei is really a global figure.